The bi-personal exhibition Levia Gravia by Valerio Anceschi and Luca Scarabelli opens at Fondazione Sabe per l’Arte, Ravenna, curated by Francesco Tedeschi. The space, active since November 2021, becomes a reference point in the area for the support and diffusion of contemporary art, in particular of sculpture.The Levia Gravia exhibition not only marks the dialogue between the artistic researches of Luca Scarabelli and Valerio Anceschi, but also makes lightness and gravity coexist and exchange, almost passing the baton. “Without the lived experience of opposites, there can be no experience of totality”: I quote Ernst Jünger to indicate the opposing conceptualities of the artists to create the space itself, coming alive in their static nature.
Levia Gravia, installation view, courtesy of the Fondazione Sabe per l’Arte, Ravenna. Photo by Daniele Casadio
The present works bring movement into the sculptural paradoxicality. Starting from a pair of scissors, hysterically wedged that carry with them the artist’s ductus gravis, as if their motion were visible, dampened by an element as delicate as it is powerful and levis, an egg. We find the impulse, then, in the work Simmetria: assimetria where the welded iron twists, two-dimensional, almost as if it were displeased with its sharp ends, recalling the ice blocks of Das Eismeer by Caspar David Friedrich, yet motionless. A Sauro, heavy and tired, moves its unstable limbs across the space of Fondazione Sabe per l’Arte.
Levia Gravia, installation view, courtesy of the Fondazione Sabe per l’Arte, Ravenna. Photo by Daniele Casadio
And there, scrutinizing and alert, the taxidermied crow finds refreshment for an eternal instant, on bicycle tires which, perhaps, sooner or later, will resume their rapid run in the Orizzonte degli eventi. The antinomy continues, with the Passi sparsi, motionless, ready to scatter between the legs of the visitors like naughty children. As if, at nightfall, Levia Gravia could come to life. “Ad leve rursus opus, iuvenilia carmina, veni” Ovidius’ verse which finds space with lightness of motion, almost playful, between the actual sculptural corporeity.
Levia Gravia, installation view, courtesy of the Fondazione Sabe per l’Arte, Ravenna. Photo by Daniele Casadio
The motion, latent or manifest, is unpredictable and astonishing, almost mystical dictated by vibrations of the air and by the limits of our imagination. As Theodor Roethke says “The soul is endowed with multiple movements” and this is how the recovered iron and objects excluded from their function find a new possibility, as a medium, for the highest intention.
Levia Gravia, installation view, courtesy of the Fondazione Sabe per l’Arte, Ravenna. Photo by Daniele Casadio
Every curvature and every surface that the object touches find an expressive form similar to dance as its own language. I like to think that the movement of the works is a Kuchipudi dance, fluid with the torso but rapid and sharp from the feet. Figures that expand and take up their own space, sometimes becoming its content and container like Immobile limite del contenente, between felt and marble.
Levia Gravia, installation view, courtesy of the Fondazione Sabe per l’Arte, Ravenna. Photo by Daniele Casadio
Caressed by the sun, then, we find the Aeriforme, which shyly looks out between the brick columns. Alone and hovering in the air, detached from his massive body, he whirls with the dart of the sun. And we can only admire the precious dance, in silence.
Info:
Valerio Anceschi e Luca Scarabelli, Levia Gravia
15/04/2023- 24/06/2023
Fondazione Sabe per l’Arte
Via Giovanni Pascoli 31, Ravenna
www.sabeperlarte.org
Born in 1999. She falls in love with art by looking at her mother’s paint. She’s studying History of Art at the Ca’ Foscari University (Venice) and in the meantime divulges online videos of art pills. She deals with contemporary art as a critic, curator and artist.
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